


big damn heroes

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Ahsoka Tano Lives, Ahsoka Tano Needs a Hug, Angst and Humor, BAMF Ahsoka Tano, Chewbacca is the only adult around here, Colonialism, Gen, Jedi purge, Kashyyk, Mos Eisley, Rise of the Empire, Trandoshans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 06:35:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17340380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Five times Ahsoka and Chewbacca crossed paths, and one time they didn't.





	big damn heroes

**1**

 

"I found one of the tiny Jedi up a tree," roared a hassled historian, holding a very small Togruta at arm's length. "I know they are supposed to be visiting our centre of governance, and it is meant to be educational, but can't their teachers keep track of them?"

 

"Obviously not," Chewbacca howled back, eyeing the child in question. It had large blue eyes, immature blue and white striped montrals, and orange skin with slowly-forming white patterns. It was also upside down and giggling. "What was it doing?"

 

"How should I know?" The historian shook the child slightly. Which made it giggle more. "Hunting lizards, I think."

 

"Maybe its teachers forgot snacks," Chewbacca hazarded. Child or not, the little Jedi had the sharp teeth of an obligate carnivore, and his own cubs - now significantly older than this little scrap of mischief - would have sneaked off to hunt if not fed regularly. "Don't do that, Ciirkabukk, I don't think it's good for Togruta."

 

"This is a Togruta?" Ciirkabukk turned the child the right way up and scrutinised it. "I didn't think it was pointy enough."

 

Chewbacca reflected on the merits of interstellar travel for broadening the horizons. Ciirkabukk was a venerable expert on Wookiee constitutional law, but obviously xenobiology had passed her by. "Well, it's a baby, isn't it? Makes sense." He held his arms out. "Give it here, I'll take it back to its household leader."

 

The much-harassed teacher Jedi, whose charges had gone completely wild over the last half an hour and who had only just registered that one of them had disappeared completely, was very grateful to have the little Togruta returned to him; Ahsoka Tano received a thorough scold which did not seem to chasten her all that much.

 

Chewbacca liked her spirit, and found her response to hunger completely understandable. He slipped her a piece of meat jerky and taught her to say 'thank you' in Shryiiwook.

 

**2**

 

Any day which involved being captured by Trandoshans and released for their hunting pleasure was a bad day. Chewbacca looked forward to improving it by locating his kidnapper, ripping his arms off, and beating his pointy hissy face to a pulp with them. They hadn't seen fit to allow him weapons, so hand-to-hand combat it would have to be.

 

Fucking Trandoshans and their hunting culture. Were they allergic to a fair fight?

 

Chewbacca's day improved marginally (by some measures) and worsened significantly (by others) when he ran across a small group of abandoned Jedi padawans, marshalled by an oddly familiar-looking Togruta, now significantly larger, pointier, and capable of putting up a better fight. On the one hand, he now had several powerful, if skittish, allies; at least one of them was a seasoned fighter, and the others knew the hunting grounds like the backs of their hands. On the other, it said alarming things about the state of the galaxy that several promising Jedi apprentices had disappeared and not been properly searched for - either by their masters, or by the Jedi as a whole. Ahsoka Tano retained a touching faith in her teachers, but the others were gloomily convinced no-one would ever come looking for them.

 

Chewbacca wasn't sure who to believe, but he also wasn't surprised to find that Ahsoka had kept the spirit that had sent her off to hunt lizards instead of throwing a tantrum over her hunger, or that she had become the small group's de facto leader. If it was Skywalker who had taught her loyalty and leadership, her faith might be justified. Whether it was or not, he was getting these damn kids off this damn planet, exercising some self-defence on that goddamned Trandoshan, and going home to put his feet up and have a drink.

 

Ahsoka was an impressive little warrior, though. She picked up Shryiiwook quickly, never despaired visibly, and never let her momentum falter for lack of her lightsabers. She might grow into someone worth fighting alongside. Chewbacca would have to report to the Elders, and perhaps they'd see fit to mention it to Grand Master Yoda. Kashyyk would be a good assignment for a new knight.

 

**3**

 

As a society, Wookiees tended to call things as they saw them, and as such, the Elders of Kashyyk called the Empire a dictatorship. That went down badly, but not as badly as the fact that they were non-human sentients. Chewbacca had always been a warrior rather than a scholar, but he had a reasonable degree of political acumen and could read the writing on the wall as well as anyone else. "Rehabilitative camps" were prisons. "Work-study programmes" were forced labour. "Honourable positions in the Empire's crack infantry, fighting alongside the gallant clonetroopers who saved us from the Separatists and the Jedi" were cannon fodder by any other name, the Empire didn’t like the clonetroopers any more than anyone else did, the murder of the Jedi had been politically motivated, and given the way the Separatists had folded like mouldy leaves in the face of the Emperor they had probably been a blind all along. Also, Chewbacca had shot the shit with plenty of clonetroopers prior to the death of the Jedi and there was something very funny up with all of them now. Like they'd had a collective personality transplant.

 

Chewbacca didn't think it was an accident that infantry recruitment was targeted at non-human sentients, or that non-humans seemed to need the most 'rehabilitation'. But his heart broke most for the kids who'd really believed that work-study meant opportunities, and who were now gone beyond any reasonable chance of rescue. You couldn't rip the arms off the Emperor, though Chewbacca lived in hope that he might get to try.

 

Controls were clamping down on Kashyyk, troopers patrolling ruthlessly. The capital, in particular, was seething. Chewbacca formed part of a citizens' watch designed to keep the kids from getting into trouble and causing a brutal crackdown before formal resistance could get a foothold, and made nightly strolls with a couple of colleagues part of his routine. Breaking curfew, of course, but technically they were registered with the garrison and fell well within their citizens' rights.

 

Citizens' rights. Ha. Chewbacca would believe it when he saw it.

 

It was no more than four or five months after the establishment of the Empire when he saw his first Jedi since Grand Master Yoda had fled. In retrospect it was not at all a surprise either that it was Ahsoka Tano or that she was dancing too close to the edge.

 

A trooper patrol was out to get a couple of kids out walking five minutes before curfew began. Chewbacca, Liakkerrikkata and Shhoryyhn were hot on their heels. The kids were clearly aware of both these things, and just as clearly panicking, as they skirted the edge of a municipal hunting-ground. They would be home in time, if Chewbacca had identified their household correctly, but losing their composure would give the troopers an excuse to haul them off to some hole where even the most distant roots of the Great Tree didn't reach.

 

Suddenly, Chewbacca heard blasterfire in the hunting-ground. He looked sideways at Shhoryyhn, who shook his head. Nobody nearby hunted with a blaster; that was rare on Kashyyk, and moreover it was a social solecism, scaring other prey and making it that much harder for anyone else to pick up dinner.

 

"Officers, quick!" Liakkerrikkata cried. "Those must be strangers! Let us help you track them down!"

 

Liakkerrikkata was a terrible actress, but fortunately, the troopers' Shryiiwook was basic enough that they couldn’t capture the nuance. She and Shhoryyhn swept the troopers away from the children into the hunting-ground, to search for what Chewbacca suspected to be an entirely fictitious stranger with a blaster, and Chewbacca seized the kids by the scruffs of their necks and hurried them home.

 

It didn't escape his attention that someone was following him - a slight, hooded figure, who moved as silently as a hunter, and leapt through the trees with the unnerving grace of the Jedi. He knew who she was even before she slipped in through a back window of his house and pushed back her hood, revealing montrals that were now nearly mature, and teeth that were as sharp as ever. He also knew she had taken an enormous risk by coming here, even if there were probably very few places that offered her even the slightest hint of safety. Kashyyk was crawling with troopers.

 

"Ahsoka Tano," he rumbled, propping his fists on his hips. "I hope you didn't throw away a blaster for that little trick."

 

She shook her head. "It was an illusion."

 

"A good one."

 

Ahsoka shrugged and looked at her feet. "Master Kenobi taught me."

 

"He still alive?"

 

"I hope so. He's still on the wanted lists. Unlike... well." She smiled tightly. She looked as if she had done all her crying several times over already.

 

Chewbacca was kind enough not to make the implication explicit. Ahsoka had adored Knight Skywalker, and his name had appeared on the kill lists within the first hours of Empire Day: cut down by his own men while defending the crèches at the Jedi Temple, or so Chewbacca had heard.

 

The murder of children was a terrible thing. A stain on the Empire that would never be wiped out. The fact that they were in the process of murdering a large number of other children for the crime of not having human biology suggested they did not care.

 

"Why did you come here, little warrior?" Chewbacca asked.

 

"Looking for Master Yoda," Ahsoka said. "I'm not a Jedi any more, not really, but Master Yoda is wise." She swallowed. "I need wisdom."

 

"He's not here," Chewbacca said. "He left on Empire Day, to find Kenobi. Find one, and you'll find the other - although it will probably be a bit less straightforward than that."

 

She nearly laughed. "Just a bit."

 

 _I'm not a Jedi any more, not really._ She wasn't carrying lightsabers, but then, she hadn't in the Trandoshans' playground either, and it hadn't slowed her down all that much - and it probably granted her a very thin veneer of safety, slowing her identification as a Jedi. Or former Jedi.

 

Ahsoka's trial had been headline news over half the galaxy. Chewbacca had thought the evidence against her weak, the charges improbable, and the Jedi cowards for not fighting for her, but he wasn't clear on the outcome of the trial. That story had not been so widely told, perhaps because whoever it was who had taken Ahsoka's place was not the padawan of so famous a Republic hero. But Chewbacca wasn’t clear on if Ahsoka had actually been acquitted or not. He supposed it hardly mattered now.

 

He asked anyway.

 

"My trial was annulled," she said, looking miserable. "As if it had never happened. Because Barriss - my friend - she did it, not me." Ahsoka made a loose gesture. "The war... damaged her. She fell to the Dark."

 

Chewbacca nodded. He had always thought the Jedi risked too much, sending half-grown cubs to war. Most of their knights weren't fitted for the grind of battle, never mind the padawans.

 

 "They - um, the Council, they offered me my knighthood. Said it was my trial of spirit." Ahsoka stared at the floor, and Chewbacca stared at her, appalled. "I chose to leave instead. They didn't stick by me when I was unjustly accused, they didn’t even - my hunt-mother, my Finder, they stepped away from me. Only Master Kenobi and Master Skywalker really believed me." Ahsoka shook her head. "How was I supposed to believe that abandonment was my trial? It was just a way of covering up their mistakes."

 

"It was an entire pile of bullshit and you were wise not to believe it," Chewbacca said. Oh, he'd have _words_ for the sage Master Yoda when he saw him next. Immediately after ripping the Emperor's arms off, freeing Kashyyk, and fulfilling a number of other pipe dreams.

 

Ahsoka sniffled. He patted her lightly on the shoulder.

 

"You can sleep here for a few hours," he said. "Rest. And then we'll see you on your way. But for now, you're safe."

 

She slept deeply. Chewbacca sat up with a bowcaster he knew would soon be confiscated, keeping watch.

 

**4**

 

Ten years had passed - an action-packed ten years, involving far too much incarceration, way too much Empire, a despair that had more than once threatened to drown Chewbacca, and, as an antidote to all of the above, Han Solo, who couldn't stay out of trouble in an empty room but meant far too well for Chewbacca to leave him behind - before Chewbacca saw Ahsoka Tano again. Han's humanitarian impulses hadn't ended when he'd handed over six hundred million credits' worth of coaxium to Enfys Nest, and since Chewbacca was fully in sympathy with his ideals (though not usually his methods) they found themselves supplying various kinds of rebel at a cut-price rate more often than not. Offering cheap deals on medicines that were technically out of date but still good to slave revolts. Running weapons to partisans for bargain-basement prices. Accidentally dropping a crate of food off the back of the _Falcon_ where a bunch of starving kids could see it and causing enough of a diversion for them to loot it. Whoops.

 

It didn't make money, but it made the galaxy a very slightly better place.

 

Qi'ra had probably done Han a favour by leaving him behind. Han still wanted to be the good guy, even if he flinched from signing up to a cause; Chewbacca thought that after belonging to Lady Proxima and the Empire all his life he couldn't bear the idea of belonging to anything but himself and the right kind of person. He would have signed over his soul to Qi'ra the same way he'd handed over the biggest score he'd ever make to Enfys Nest, the same way he'd later lay everything on the table for Leia and Luke, but belonging to a cause, to a machine? Nope. Not happening.

 

He talked too big, thought too big, and got Chewbacca into so many Situations with a capital S that Chewbacca regularly considered just getting up and leaving, but he had a good heart, a quick trigger finger, and the lightest hands on the controls of a starship that Chewbacca had ever seen. Chewbacca had fought with worse. So long as Han let Chewbacca do most of the thinking and all of the negotiating, it would be fine.

 

Chewbacca left him crooning to the power couplings and went to a highly deniable meeting with a senior Alliance operative who needed the cooperation of a good smuggler. Chewbacca and Han apparently came recommended. Chewbacca would say this for Enfys Nest, she did not give up.

 

The senior Alliance operative had familiar bright eyes and sharp teeth, and when she saw Chewbacca she took off her mask and pushed back her hood.

 

"I heard you were dead," Ahsoka Tano said.

 

"I’ve heard you were dead so many times I’ve lost count," Chewbacca retorted. "Still not a Jedi?"

 

Ahsoka Tano lit up a pair of blinding white lightsabers. "I am what I need to be," she said, "and the Force is with me."

 

Chewbacca saw a twentysomething with the heavy hands of fate on her shoulders, and wished for a slightly simpler life, where Ahsoka Tano could have been a skilled warrior and a good teacher instead of a spy.

 

"Funny colour for a lightsaber. I thought they mostly came in green and blue."

 

Ahsoka smiled rather wistfully.

 

Chewbacca didn’t push it. "All right then," he said, and folded his arms. "What do you want? And how much is the Alliance willing to pay?"

 

The price was too low for the lightsaber crystals, but Chewbacca thought they could stretch to transporting a shipment of less distinctive components. Han complained that the margin was too thin, and he wouldn’t have clocked they were transporting disassembled lightsabers if Chewbacca had labelled the crates in fluorescent large print, but Chewbacca ignored him.

 

"So this is to help a friend of yours, yeah?" Han said, once they were in hyperspace.

 

Chewbacca gave a non-committal grunt. He wasn’t sure Ahsoka Tano had the luxury of friends.

 

"Well," said Han, "I guess I understand that."

 

**5**

 

The atmosphere on liberated Imperial Centre was weird. The Alliance to Restore the Republic took over fancy high-rise penthouses and the lower levels waited to see what would happen. There was singing in the streets, yes, but there was tension too.

 

Leia and Mon Mothma and Luke forged ahead; Han bobbed along in their wake, occasionally foisting food on Leia when she forgot to eat. Chewbacca took a back seat and watched.

 

At the end of the first week Ahsoka Tano crashed his solo party through a ventilation shaft. Chewbacca pointed a blaster at her out of habit and then lowered it.

 

"The Empire didn’t actually make these things any harder to sneak into," she observed, wriggling free of the wall. "But I guess I'm not an undersized fifteen-year-old any more."

 

Chewbacca said that he guessed not, and asked what she was doing here.

 

"I went to the Jedi Temple," Ahsoka said, dropping to the floor. That accounted for the haunted look in her eyes. "I had to see for myself."

 

"Why'd you do a stupid thing like that?" Chewbacca enquired.

 

Ahsoka shrugged. "I just told you." She reached up into the vent and pulled out a bottle of Corellian brandy. "I wanted to seek out a friend afterwards, and most of the people who still know I'm alive are not the kind of people I can sit with quietly."

 

Chewbacca fetched two glasses and made a questioning noise.

 

"Mon Mothma wants to tell me we've won. Riyo Chuchi wants to reminisce. Draven wants to know where I’ve been." Ahsoka's smile turned sad. "Luke wants me to teach him - little does he know there's nothing I can offer. Leia looks at me like I'm the last person in the world she wants to see right now. She's never going to give herself time to deal with finding out who her biological parents are."

 

Chewbacca yanked the stopper out of the brandy bottle with unnecessary violence. Togruta didn't live as long as Wookiees did, but this one had still grown up too fast. Not even forty and wearing the loneliness of a prophet in the wilderness. To hell with Kenobi and Yoda for leaving her to her own devices.

 

"She moves in the Senate like Padmé Amidala did. Leia, I mean, she does. Chin up, eyes front, and around every corner a friend or an enemy. Bail must have taught her to do that."

 

"And Luke?" Chewbacca poured a decent measure into both glasses.

 

"The Council would have fifty fits at the sight of him. He looks so much like Anakin, only short. The sound of him arguing with them would probably kill them."

 

"Because he doesn’t know shit about Jedi philosophy?"

 

Ahsoka smirked. "Partly that." She sighed, and flopped onto the sofa. "Partly that he was right. Anakin did overcome the Darkness, before he died. The Council would say that was impossible."

 

"War's not over, but at least you can mourn in peace now." Chewbacca sat down next to her.

 

Ahsoka clinked her glass with his in a silent toast, and cried a little.

 

"Next stop freedom on Kashyyk," she said, after a while, when the tears had dried. "I owe you a debt."

 

**+1**

 

Chalmun's cantina in Mos Eisley was a total mess and the town was crawling with stormtroopers. Ahsoka prodded a severed Aqualish limb with one toe and asked herself if that could possibly be lightsaber cauterisation, and if so, what the fuck was going on.

 

The bartender looked stolid as ever. She nodded at him. "I have a meeting with Chalmun."

 

"He mentioned." The bartender pushed open the swing gate that led behind the bar.

 

Ahsoka pulled up the panel behind the bar and climbed down the ladder, then made her way into Chalmun's secret cellars, where she found the Wookiee prodding at a terminal. Cooking the books in order to defraud the Imperial taxmen, no doubt.

 

"You've missed him," Chalmun said, without looking up. She hadn't bothered to cover her scent. "He picked up an expensive passenger fare and went."

 

Ahsoka frowned and took a seat. "I thought Chewbacca said passengers were more trouble than they were worth."

 

"Yeah, well, looking at all the white beetles out there, looks like they were trouble." Chalmun shrugged and stretched. "Some wide-eyed kid from out in the sticks - you know, the kind the farmers feed on womp rats and blue milk, lethal as shit but naïve, too - and an old guy in a cloak with a lightsaber."

 

Ahsoka kept her face blank. "I noticed you had some unusual interior decoration."

 

"I'd apologise but we both know you'd eat it if you had to."

 

Ahsoka blinked slowly and showed all her teeth. "Aqualish upsets my digestion."

 

"Yeah, and paying customers being shot and maimed in my cantina upsets mine, but Solo and the weirdo Jedi didn't give me much of a choice." Chalmun rifled around and produced some jerky; Ahsoka took it, remembering another Wookiee who'd given her the same snack once. When would that have been? She and Anakin had never taken the 501st to Kashyyk, and the Trandoshans' playground hadn't been well-provided with nibbles.

 

"Solo?" she asked.

 

"Greedo went after him. He was hoping to hand over the corpse to Jabba, who's not thrilled Solo had to dump a shipment, but Solo killed him before Jabba turned up." Chalmun tapped his fingers on the desk. "Solo talked Jabba down, but that debt's only getting bigger. Even Solo can't keep up."

 

"Chewbacca won't let him crash." Ahsoka stretched her legs out. "Seems like things have been busy around here. No wonder Chewbacca decided to clear out." She reached into her pockets and pulled out a datachip. "That reminds me. I’ve got something for you."

 

"Fresh off Kashyyk?" Chalmun demanded.

 

"Within the month. Not even I can do better than that."

 

"No," Chalmun agreed, turning the datachip delicately in his fingers and then feeding it to a specific datapad. Letters, Ahsoka knew, plans, books, images - everything that could be salvaged from a blockaded planet where the Empire kidnapped children for test subjects, carefully encrypted and sent out in bits and pieces. "You're more reliable than most, Stripy."

 

Ahsoka rolled her eyes. "So who did Chewbacca take off with?"

 

"Weirdo Jedi offered him _a lot_ of money to take him and the kid to Alderaan."

 

Ahsoka blinked. "Any name?" A bounty hunter might have stolen lightsabers, both as weapons and as proof they feared nothing, not even the Empire - Ahsoka had had quite the little sideline in stealing them back, once - and the general public couldn't distinguish between a hunter with lightsabers and a Jedi. But they wouldn’t go to Alderaan.

 

"Weirdo, no. The kid, yes. Introduced himself at the bar as Luke Skywalker - I told you he was naïve."

 

Ahsoka sat very still. "You've got to be stupid to take a name like that into the Core," she said, which was true, but which wasn't what she was thinking. Anakin's son - he must be. Which meant the weirdo Jedi more than likely _was_ a Jedi - probably Master Obi-Wan himself.

 

"Yeah." Chalmun snorted dismissively. "Hope Chewbacca gets paid before the Empire explains the facts of life to the kid, or there'll be no living with him."

 

"Neither of us has to." Ahsoka got to her feet. "It's been fun, Chalmun, but I need to be heading out."

 

Chalmun gave her a sharp look. "To Alderaan?"

 

"Wherever the wind takes me," Ahsoka said, and gave Chalmun an equally sharp grin.

 

She headed out into the sunlight, and took a very roundabout route to the spaceport.

 


End file.
